The Interview with Tad Bartlett.

Hello to new subscribers and welcome to Sitting in Silence, the newsletter for readers, writers, and thinkers. The Interview is one of the most popular features here, and I’m happy to present another one. Talking to writers of all stripes never gets old. Today’s conversation is with Tad Bartlett.

Tad Bartlett is a writer and family man. He’s also extremely dear to me. We first met when an acquaintance realized we were both writing books and connected us. Tad is deeply involved in the writing community and his most recent work has appeared in Salvation South, The Bitter Southerner, and The Massachusetts Review.

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Maurice: What are your earliest memories of reading or writing stories?

Tad: As far as first memories of writing stories, when I was 8 or 9 years old, I recall banging out satirical news stories on the family typewriter and cutting and pasting them into a satire newspaper. I was influenced mainly by Doonesbury and Bloom County, mashed up with news of the day from the Selma Times-Journal (this was our local daily newspaper, which was this physical thing that was once delivered to everyone's houses, kind of like twitter but without the character-limit, and with investigation and copy editing and fact checking). There are copies somewhere. That only lasted for an issue or two, though. In high school, I wrote poetry--typical teenager angsty stuff, but also some longer-form narrative verse. My sophomore year of high school, I got an after-school job running the darkroom of the Times-Journal, and really dug seeing the raw material of stories appear in the development tanks under my chemical-stained hands, and the narratives I would glean from that made their way into those poems, some of which became story-songs in short-lived bands. But I don't recall writing any stories-proper until college, first as organic mind-storms that popped up in letters to my college friends over the summers and then in my first undergraduate writing workshops. They were rarely serious, usually absurd, often pedantic, but they started doing things with sentence length and structure, and phrasing, that I'd been experimenting with in poetry; and in prose form they were addictive, these sentences. I could never stop. I have never stopped.

As for reading stories, I can't remember a time not reading, so it's hard to dredge up an earliest memory of reading, to pinpoint some place where it first began. My sister, Kim, four years older than me, had several bookshelves crammed with books, and I do remember at one point she arranged a lending program for me when we were young, and I shot through all the Nancy Drew and Little House and Hardy Boys and who knows what all else.  (Fittingly, she's a school librarian-extraordinaire now). And there were bookshelves that lined the hallway of our house, and I remember reading and re-reading through a National Geographic series of books, or maybe it was Time/Life, about the Appalachian Trail and numerous other natural wonders; and this multi-volume biography of Winston Churchill; and Arthur C. Clarke books. There was a series of historical fictions in the school library along the lines of "I was there at ..." and some historical event (I specifically remember one that was "I was there at Antietam," and remember it not sugar-coating the bloodiness and tragedy of that battle). And of course the upstairs at the Selma/Dallas County Public Library, filled with the books that would take me from childhood through my teen years, just a ten- or fifteen-minute bike ride away all summer long. I can locate childhood summer in three specific smells: the smell of a freshly opened can of tennis balls; the smell of rotting leaf mash and mud from the Jones Creek creek-bottom that ran by our house; and the smell of book pages in the library.

Maurice: Your sister knew what she was doing! I feel like every writer has someone who literally "put a book in my hand and changed the course of my life." My brother is older than me. When he left the house, I inherited a bunch of his comics from an earlier generation. Marvel and Conan the Barbarian stuff from the 60s and 70s. It was a window into a bygone aesthetic that shapes the way I see time even now. When you made the transition to prose what did that feel like? What did you like that prose could do? And how did poetry and songwriting influence your prose?

Tad: When I started writing poetry, I played with various forms, working my way out of forms into free verse, then playing with inventing restrictions and forms, and back again. There was a freedom, even in adopting spatial-, sound-, or breath-based limitations. But when I first started writing prose in deliberate fashion, I felt constrained again by what I thought might be narrative imperatives, feeling I had to deal with time and linearity and movement through space in very conventional ways. Some of my earlier work (which you had the misfortune of workshopping with me) was weighed down with these things. I liked exploring ideas in more concrete fashion, but I just wasn't good at it. And then I discovered the prose writer's prerogative of freedom--those same freedoms I'd intuited my way toward in poetry just took a lot longer to dawn on me in prose. As the writer, I could dictate how time would work; I could dictate how movement would be achieved; and most importantly, I could be free to choose what narrative imperatives were dealt with on the page and which were fine trusted to the reader to intuit--in other words, the only thing imperative in narrative was what I could get away with.

And then it was all about finding those rhythms I'd loved in poetry and feeling them into my prose. How long to sustain a Coltrane-esque run without losing meaning. How to know when to punctuate those runs with short three-bar bursts of punk rock starkness and sensibility. Which is perhaps how songwriting influences my prose. Not in the conventional sense, through lyrics, but through the music itself, tempos, melodies, counterpoint, poly-rhythms. I'm a terrible one with lyrics. I apparently make up my own lyrics to many songs. But when I'm writing, and I latch onto a rhythm, I will literally dance in my chair as I type at the keyboard.

Maurice: I enjoyed reading your early work! You had (and have) a particular voice. I learned a lot from how you put rhythm on the page. It's not a skill most people have or use. Also, we should acknowledge that early work is a stage any serious writer must go through. I have a few novels tucked away. You're one of the few people who know any details about them. I don't regret those "unsuccessful Manuscripts" because they helped me get better. Also, "writer's prerogative of freedom." That's a strong phrase! I'm going to hold onto that. How has your writing changed since you found this freedom? Did going an MFA program play a role in finding it? 

Tad: Since I've given myself the freedom, I've learned control, how to control the pitch and the rhythm, and most importantly, how to not let it get in the way of the story, to work on a less visible plane. The MFA program was good for this, because the chief thing I learned--both from reading others' work and having my own work workshopped--was how to tell when the writing was too visible, when the clockwork and seams showed. Work that comes across as organically elegant and simple seems to result from the hardest work. I learned hard work from the MFA program. I learned what good writing looks like and what type of writing people put out in the world from being a reader for Bayou magazine, which was part of being in the MFA program. I learned to not believe that I can only write when the muse hits, that I can make myself put the butt in the chair and write when it's time to write, because I had to have a story ready to workshop three times every semester (or six times in semesters when I had both a fiction and a CNF workshop). And, as much as I try to be a good reader, the MFA program gave a serious boost to that, in the literature coursework we had to complete. It goes without saying that being a better writer comes from being a better reader. And being in the MFA program also aided my literary citizenship, as it put me in places with other writers doing their thing, in ways where I could help boost signals, attend readings, go to conferences, be parts of conversations.

That being said, every single one of those things can be done not in an MFA program. Self-discipline. Reading for independent journals. Finding writing community and making yourself get out there in the literary world. And I have done those things--before the MFA program and after. You and I did a lot of these things together. And maybe that's the key. Be interested in what you're doing as a writer. Be interested in what people around you are doing as writers. Be open to friendship. Push your friends and be pushed by them. The MFA program created a space for that sort of thing to happen, but it has happened for me inside and outside of the MFA program. We have been lucky to have each other. And we are lucky to have had the kind of MFA experience we had in the CWW at UNO. And we are lucky to live in a city with a lot of intersecting writing and artist communities, filled with people eager to support each other.

Ultimately, love is the key. And not fair-weather love, but love that drives you to to the hard work and be open to the hard work, love for what you do, love for others, and the most difficult kind, love for yourself. Radical love. Humdrum everyday love. Love so bountiful that it spills out onto pages. Love that clears your sight so you can see the flaws; love that makes you revise. Love that makes you strive for the unattainable perfect.

Maurice: That is a sermon, brother! Love is the answer. It's only trite if you don't think love is the answer. I believe in love. Soft love. Love that fills a house like the smell of baking bread. Love that shows up day after day after day. Let's talk about influences. I know you're a fan of the Beat Generation, but I also know you read a lot of newer books too. (And yes, the literature class at the UNO MFA program will get you in shape, if you survive. I barely made it lol but it changed my life.)

Tad: Definitely the Beats were an influence early for me, particularly when I thought I might be a poet (and particularly Ginsberg), and Ginsberg actually became a bigger influence on my prose than any of the rest of that gang. But yes, I long ago put down the Kerouac and moved on to other writers who have had a great influence on me. Tom Franklin's stories and novels have shown me that I need not shy away from stories about the central- and southern-Alabama places where I grew up, that these places and people are worthy of beautiful sentences. Kiese Laymon's writing has shown me that a paragraph, a sentence, a word can always be squeezed down into something perfect, that it's never OK to just settle for something close to what you mean. Barry Hannah's work gave me permission to blur the boundaries between the concrete and the spiritual, the ugly and the beautiful in the human mind. Louis Nordan maybe has had the biggest influence on the writer I am now, as he mixes all of these lessons together in beautiful, tight prose, poetic characters, owls. But everyone whose words enter me leaves a residue of influence, and I'd be remiss not to include in a list of positive influences Toni Morrison, Beth Ann Fennelly, M.O. Walsh, Jennifer Steil, David Joy, Taylor Brown, Sahar Mustafah, Jericho Brown, Justin Torres, Chuck D, Jason Isbell, Joe Strummer, Michael Zapata, Hannah Pittard, Scott Morris, Larry Brown, Clint Smith, Barb Johnson, and you--you, my brother, are a big influence. As are the incredible writers we share community with, Emily and J.Ed. and Larry and Chris and April and the Susans and Terri and Te and Steph and Ben and Anne and Amy and Nordette and the Andrews and Cassie, and oh, how I could go on and on, and influence means so many things, including that I just want to live up to the words and beauty and rigor of our people, our family, our friends, our comrades.

Maurice: Let's talk about your writing practice. I mean the basics. How do you decide what to write about? Where do you write? When do you write, for how long, and how often? What do you use? What do you do when the words won't come?

Tad: This question depresses me to contemplate. Last part of the question first: The words always are coming. I feel them all the time beneath the surface of my skin, banging against the barrier, insisting on being let out, and I long for the time to give to releasing them. There is never enough time. Isn't this every writer's lament? So, with that out of the way, the other parts of the question are easy: Where? Wherever I am when the time presents itself. At my desk at work, in between drafting briefs, and interminable conference calls; at home either in my office space, which I share in a little portable shed in the backyard with my oldest son's erstwhile music studio, or (more often) on the back deck. Though I guess that's the answer to the more literal question about where I write--the places where my fingers hit the keyboard. But, of course, the act of writing is so much more--it is also the act of soaking in inputs, reading, observing, which happens everywhere. We are never not writers. It is also the act of deliberatively contemplating what forms the words will take when the keyboard and the clock intersect, and that happens on my bike rides every morning. I think that answer to the "where" also mostly answers the "when." As with the answer of "wherever," the answer is also "whenever." No time of day is less fecund. And for as much time as I can get. Five minutes; five hours; it matters not. And sometimes, this is the sad part of the answer, the time presents itself to write new words only after months of there not being the time. Months. Like wandering through a desert. And sometimes, when the time presents itself, instead of putting new words down, I use the time to revise old words, or to edit others' words. But nothing is like the thrill of writing new words. As for what I use, 99% of the time it's a computer. I never write long-hand. My thoughts come in torrents and I need something faster than my cramped and arthritic hands. Occasionally, to capture a line I fear will be fleeting, I'll jot it down in the notes application on my phone. And everything gets saved into Dropbox files, so I can use any computer, facilitating the "whenever" and the "wherever." And the last part, deciding what to write about, the three main topics under which all my writing will fall will be longing (of all kinds), race, and sexual identity. On rare occasions, I'm writing all three at once. But I'm happy writing about any one of these. And I try to stay focused on one project at a time in my writing life (unlike in my reading life).

Maurice: Time is such a challenge, isn't it? I feel like we either have too much time or not enough. Either extreme is difficult to deal with. Speaking of which, going back in time, what advice would you offer your 20-year-old self? If I remember correctly, you wrote, acted, played team soccer, and did photography and journalism for a local paper. What would you tell that young man about writing and the creative part of life?

Tad: My year of being 20 was an important one. I was 20 when Nicole and I met. I was 20 when I took my first fiction workshop in undergrad. This question seems often to presuppose that there is some regret that you could undo if you had the chance to talk to your younger self, and there's nothing I think I would undo. Except maybe I'd tell 20-year-old Tad to be more careful of his head, that he'd had too many concussions already, but that it wasn't too late to avoid the post-concussion syndrome that would come after a few more. So, younger-Tad, be aware of where your head is in relation to other objects. But other than that ...

I suppose the big question is whether I would make the decision to leave my magazine editing job a few years later and go to law school, or I would tell younger me to be wary of that trap. There is no doubt that that took me away from writing for a good many years. But, at the same time, if I hadn't gone to law school and then became a lawyer who missed writing, I would never have met another young lawyer who was trying to get back to writing and start meeting up regularly to workshop bad novel drafts. In other words, without that decision, I would have never met you, and I would not be the writer I am now without being a writer-in-comradeship with you for all these years. I likely would have gone to an MFA program much earlier in life, and maybe it would have been a different MFA program, and I would have been around different writers and different mentors and become a different writer. Perhaps a less interesting or less skilled one? These are doors you can't open.

So I guess I might not tell 20-year-old Tad too much. He's going to go through some tough times mentally, but he's going to make it through. He's going to go through some dry years creatively, but he's going to make it through. AND he's going to go through incredibly rich and beautiful times, too, which is how he'll make it through. But I don't even think I would tell 20-year-old Tad that he's going to make it through. The not-knowing and anguish is part of it all, part of the nonlinear mishmash that, well, if it's nonlinear then I can't make a causal connection here. It all just IS. And every bit of what IS creates experience and knowledge that is critical in the formation of art. So, still-so-young-Tad, watch where your head is, but otherwise, I'm just going to go over here and sit in the corner and drink a sazerac. Yes, you will grow to like brown liquors, but no hurry. Keep drinking your vodka and your rum for now. Just feel your way blindly through what's to come (but watch your head), and always move forward with love in your heart.

Maurice: Meeting you back in the day was one of the defining moments of my life, brother. I would not be here if not for you. So tell young Tad to do anything he wants as long as we meet each other! Those dumb unpublished books we wrote forever ago were foundational for our present writing. But let's turn outward. You've mentored and supported many writers over the years. You've been integral in writing groups and organizations. You've hosted many readings. You've run booths at conferences. What advice would you give someone who is working on a book? Or any writer looking for a way forever?

Tad: Jesus, Maurice, if I knew the answer to that ... I tell you, sometimes I think that folks who profess to know something useful about working on a book or finding their way are full of shit, or real assholes. Well now, children, let me look down from here on high and tell you how to do it. But that's also pessimistic, cynical Tad, and not the working-hard, communally minded, do-the-hard-work-of-spreading-love-outward Tad. So, let me preface this by saying the advice here is imperfect and comes from an imperfect person, that I recognize that I am of no more authority than anyone else, and, indeed, likely less authority than most, to even presume to offer advice. This isn't advice, in fact. This is just the sharing of words, offering them up, for folks to do with them as they please, including ignoring them or roasting them on a spit around a fire, stuffing them in a bowl and smoking them, whatever. So here are some words, many of them words I'm passing on from others:

Be frustrated, but do not let your frustration defeat you. Always be willing to come humbly back to the page. Come in community to other writers. Do not be a literary citizen in a transactional sense, looking for what literary citizenship can provide back to you, but do it wholly selflessly, recognizing the humanity and the longing and the fears and desires of the writers around you. Look to give, always. Life is long. Be happy with failing, and know that you will never reach perfection. Revise, always. Observe, always. Read, always. Engage, always. I don't seem to have any micro-level, grits-and-grease advice. Only the big stuff. Because in our smallnesses we are all different and so I can't speak to that in a helpful way; but in our bignesses we are all human. Don't use your superpowers for evil. That's a good one there.

Maurice: That's all sterling advice for those willing to listen. I appreciate that none of us are perfect, but that doesn't mean we can't share ourselves for the benefit of others. Speaking of benefits: you're transported 100 years into the future, what improvements to our world and the human condition would you want to see?

Tad: The usual. Peace, love, and chocolate cream pie. No, chocolate cake.

I hate it. I can tell you easily all the things that I think are wrong with the world of today, and improving all of those things would be the improvements I would want to see. But I don't see a world in 100 years where we're not still fighting to improve the human condition. Where inequality in income, wealth, and work-burdens does not still exist. Where racism does not still exist. Where people do not still operate out of fear and hatred and tribalism rather than out of love. Where people do choose the safeties of the known over the risks of the unknown. I think it slightly more possible that we can begin to treat the Earth we share in common better, though I do not harbor thoughts that it is not already too late. Maybe the improvement in the human condition I would wish to see would be an end to the cynicism that seems to have infected me. Some return of goodness in exchange for hope? In 50 years, I have hoped a lot. You've seen me do it. But that hope so often seems to not be met with anything good and hoped-for in return. So maybe that's it--the improvement in the human condition I would like to see is that, every now and then, someone hopes for something and that hope is not in vain.

Ask me something happier.

Maurice: I think part of getting older is that feeling that we've hoped so long and so hard for so much. People get worn out, right? But this too is natural. That's the beauty of young people. They come on the scene and remind of what it meant to hope that way and also what it feels like to not know what's coming. In fairness, you always were a bit cynical. Not about life, but about the corrupt nature of those in power and power structures. You've been a fighter your whole life. That takes a lot of effort! Final questions: like me, you're a deep lover of music. You have stacks of vinyl and a record player. What are you listening to these days? What do you do to take care of yourself? What brings you joy?

Tad: Oh, Maurice, you have wounded me, calling me a cynic! Perhaps this is a self-inflicted wound, as looking back on my answers I do kind of come across as a bitter-old-man-in-the-making. I didn't mean it like that. Because days and nights are full of joy, for sure. Nicole brings me joy. Eli and Max and Lucie bring me joy. You bring me joy! I take care of myself by being surrounded by joy, be seeing it where it is and reveling in it. And, yes, in music. Music like oxygen. Lately, the music is all over the place. I've got to shout out Abe Partridge, a punk-folk shaman out of Mobile, Alabama, a Tom Waits of the deep south; and Buffalo Nichols, the new serious blues we all need. And Jason Isbell (second time he has appeared in these answers). And John Coltrane. And Sonic Youth. And the Pixies. And the Smashing Pumpkins Gish album, which is way better than their later stuff that you think is best. And Jane's Addiction. And the Cure. And the Clash. And Public Enemy. And Rage Against the Machine. And Bjork. And Billy Bragg. And the Books. And I'm going to stop now, because I really could go on forever. And writing gives me joy. New words. Revised old words. All the words.